Sucker Punched
by AnshinCrimson
Summary: When you're relying on a sadistic gunner, a pyromaniac mercenary, a moonshiner and a samurai wanted for seven cases of murder to save the world, then you know you're really in trouble... Set in Guns of Icarus Online, currently undergoing a complete grammatical overhaul.
1. Chapter 1: Battle Royale

"FUCK!" Aetien screamed as he braced himself against the wheel, heaving it back to the right. The dust storm had hit the broadside of _The Bastard Fury_ with a sudden and powerful gust of wind, The frame of the ship began to groan with stress, easily audible over the howl of the wind. "Elsie! Burn the engines! We need every ounce of power we can get!" Aetien shouted at his chief engineer, still struggling to right the airship.

The grease covered stumbled down the stairs to the auxiliary engine bay as the frame gave another groan and shudder, diving for a leather-bound case filled with steel flasks. Elsie cracked one open and her nose was immediately assaulted with the noxious stench of kerosene. She opened a custom intake on one of the engines and screwed the flask into place.

The engine immediately began to howl and vibrate as its RPMs increased past their maximum level. Repeating the process with the next engine, Elsie tossed both the caps back into the case and hurried back up the stairs.

"DOWN!" someone roared and suddenly she was lying on the deck, with her tool belt jamming her in the ribs and Grim, one of _The Bastard Fury_'s gunners lying on top of her. The all-too-familiar screech of a HE shell tore overhead. "Fuckin' crosswind saved us" he growled, a belt of incendiary clips for a Gatling gun jangled around his waist as he pulled her to her feet.

The immediately fell to the deck again as The Bastard Fury ground up against a rocky obelisk protruding up from the desert below. By the time Elsie got to her feet, Grim was already scrambling up the ladders to the upper catwalks.

Grim heaved his 6ft 2" frame up the ladder and lunged for the Whirlwind Gatling gun that was mounted on the catwalk. Locking the clip in place and chambering a round, Grim left the gun to go through its complicated loading sequence automatically.

Grim stumbled over the catwalks as more shells whipped past the airship. His junior gunner was struggling to remove a massive rectangle from the doubled barreled flak cannon and looked up at him for help. "Shaw! What the fuck are you doing?" Grim shouted, unbuckling the ammunition belt.

"The clips jammed! I can't get it out" Shaw grunted, trying to lever the mag free. Grim climbed into the seat of the flak cannon and launched a savage kick that popped the jammed clip free then settled into the seat before clamping his gunners' headset over his ears. "Get on the Whirlwind," Grim shouted over the wind and sounds of shells missing _The Bastard Fury_ by mere inches.

Grim passed the ammunition belt to Shaw, "it's already loaded, just pull the trigger and remember to compensate for the wind". Shaw bucked the belt but had a doubtful look on his face, "you can't hit it from this range! We're too far away and the crosswind is too powerful". Grim bared his teeth and squinted at the pirate Galleon in the distance, bristling with heavy cannonades and the ominous shape of a Manticore hwatcha on the upper deck.

"You mean that _you_ can't hit it," the veteran gunner snarled, "the 20mm is a fairly heavy round so the crosswind won't affect it too drastically, plus I re-aligned the barrels and bored them again last week. Should put an extra couple of yards on the range". Shaw still looked cynical but he did as he was told. Grim finished lining up the cannon and squeezed the triggers as he heard the metallic twang of cable snapping from the back of the ship.

Elsie's head snapped around as 8 rhythmic _booms_ shook the airship. She rushed up the stairs to the front of the ship and grabbed Aetien by the arm. "You need to throttle down otherwise the engines are going to tear themselves apart!" she screamed, pointing at the gauges by the wheel. All of them were in the red.

"Once we're clear of the debris! I need as much agility and power as you can coax out of them" the pilot shouted back but he reached past the wheel and pushed the accelerator lever down a notch. 8 more booms caused the deck under their feet to quake and they heard Grim's shout of triumph.

"They're nearly destroyed already and the air intakes are sucking in grit like there's no tomorrow. I'm not sure how much longer they can keep going" Elsie said. "Keep them going and I'll buy you some new ones" was all she got out of the pilot. There was an ear-splitting screech as a shell was deflected by the armor-plated bow of the envelopeA/N1. Elsie was already imagining the unsightly gouge in the metal. She ran lightly down the stairs, leaving Aetien at the helm, and doubled her pace when she heard the dreaded sound of metal beginning to grind.

She flew down the stairs to the auxiliary engines, taking them two at a time and narrowly escaped being decapitated as an engine shed a propeller blade, embedding it in the stairs behind her. "Fucking hell" she gasped, practically falling inside the compartment in relief. Lars, her Nordic apprentice from the Guild of Engineers, was already elbow deep in an engine.

The rattling drone of the Gatling gun suddenly filled her ears as Shaw sprayed the Galleon with incendiary rounds. Elsie hefted her shifter spanner and set about and went to work clearing the air filters as she heard Shaw scream "the Manticore's lining up a shot!"

"Then shoot the fucking gunner!" Grim roared through the gun smoke. "I can't! The clips' jammed again!" Grim uttered a deep throaty growl and span the cannon into position. "Guess I have to do everything myself" he said and gently squeezed the triggers once more.

The flak cannon thundered 3 more times, the first round sailing clear of the hwatcha and detonating against a wrecked vessel behind the Galleon. The second round was closer to the mark and took off the gunners head in a spray of crimson and white and blew through a pirate behind him, leaving him in two separate halves on the deck. The third round was dead on target. It hit the hwatcha in the left rocket pod, detonating one of the loaded rockets. The pirate Galleon was shredded by forty simultaneous explosions, slowly beginning to sink to the ground in a smoking pile of metal and wood.

Grim lifted his headset off and hung it around his neck, eyeing the smoking wreck.

"I fuckin' hate pirates".

**_A/N_****_1_****_: The envelope is the balloon for those who are a little rusty on their airship terminology._**


	2. Chapter 2: Lau

"I fuckin' hate pirates" Grim snarled, getting up and heading for the ladder. Shaw joined him and they descended. "Weren't you a pirate once?" Shaw asked.

"Actually I was a privateer. Very different thing. All the ships I boarded were enemies of Her Majesty the Queen" Grim shot back, approaching the helm as Aetien cut the engines, sailing clear of the debris and dust storm.

Elsie and Lars climbed up the stairs, Elsie holding a broken propeller. "Things sounded pretty bad back there, is everything okay?" Aetien asked, Elsie held up the propeller. "Fucker nearly took my head off. I can make a rough replacement out of some sheet steel" she said dourly, not looking forward to all the work ahead of her.

"Will the engines still run?" Aetien questioned, already plotting a course to the nearest major settlement in his mind. "_Ja_, they should work perfectly unless we leave them unattended in which case they will potentially catch fire and explode". Grim's jaw tightened incrementally, the thought of all the shrapnel from the engines not pleasing him in the slightest.

"Shaw can clean the guns. I'll help you two with the engines" Grim said, shuffling away from his irritating junior. Elsie nodded "I could use a hand with the replacement propeller, Lars can clean those air filters properly". Grim turned to Shaw "I want every gun gleaming, spotless, primed and sand-free in an hour". Shaw's shoulders drooped as he envisioned spending the next hour franticly cleaning the cannons in the blazing sun.

Grim and the two engineers descended to the auxiliary engine compartment as Shaw began the slow climb back up to the catwalks, leaving Aetien alone to tally the repair bill.

. . .

"… Two Svord Light Engines, various pieces of wood to replace damaged parts of the ship, replacement armour-plating, kerosene gravity-feed system, three gallons of black paint, one Hellhound Heavy Flak Cannon…" Aetien lifted his eyes from the clipboard and looked at Grim who shrugged.

"I'm pretty sure the portside gun dates back to the War and I can't find any gunsmiths marks or a name of any kind on it. When the barrels need replacement, I have to get them custom-made in Sylka and then get them shipped to where ever we are which is damn expensive. Plus, Shaw broke the right side firing pin during target practice and I can't find a replacement anywhere" Grim stated plainly. Aetien just sighed and continued.

"Various replacement air filters, multiple engine cylinders and piston heads for a Mavik Industries heavy engine and finally, one crate of assorted ammunition for the Whirlwind and one crate of standard twenty millimetre rounds" Aetien sighed once more, wondering how much it was going to cost to buy everything on the list, along with supplies and other expenses.

"No way that we will be able to afford all that" Elsie said, appearing over Aetien's shoulder and giving voice to his thoughts. "We're still making repayments to the DeVilliers from when Shaw blew a hole through their tavern". Shaw looked indignant, "come on, that could have happened to anyone!" Grim burst out laughing.

"You fired a low-yield shell out of the flak cannon while cleaning it! We were in the tavern when it happened!" Grim howled while holding his sides, "the first thing I taught you was to clear the breach and you forgot! You fucking idiot!" Grim collapsed to the floor of Aetien's room, laughing hysterically. Shaw just looked confused.

Elsie leaned over to explain, "gunners have an abnormally short life expectancy, that's why there's so few combat tested gunners around with more than a few years of combat experience under their belts" she whispered. They both looked at the battle-scarred gunner whose cackling was slowly subsiding. "And the ones that last the longest tend to have a few screws loose" Elsie added.

Grim chuckled again and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with a cordite stained finger. "So where are we setting down?" he asked, standing and looking at the map table in front of them. Aetien tapped a point on the map, "The Oasis Skyport, the only place in this neck of the desert that we can get this many supplies". Grim nodded "I used to know a guy there who bought unregistered weapons. I could track him down and get a few dollars back on that piece of shit".

Aetien scratched the thin layer of stubble on his chin "It'll take around four days to reach the Skyport at a slow pace, maybe three if we get a decent tailwind". Elsie grimaced, the thought of staying in pirate infested desert any longer seemed unbearable but if they pushed the engines any faster, the damaged engine would throw her makeshift propeller and shake itself apart in a matter of minutes.

"That is settled then, _ja_?" Lars said cheerfully, "I shall cook my famous mystery soup for tonight's dinner!" Everybody visibly paled, a few months ago Shaw had found a whole chickens foot in his bowl. Everyone avoided eating Lars' food after that.

. . .

The Oasis Skyport was filled with intense sights and smells. Vendors shouted their deals at passers-by and pickpockets roamed the crowds. The Bastard Fury pulled into the open port side of a dock with a large, familiar looking Spire class airship opposite them. "Well I'll be damned," Grim laughed as he leaned against the railing, "that's the Jackal".

Elsie joined him at the rail "and wherever the Jackal is, Samurai Lau isn't far behind". As if on cue, a dark-skinned figure with frayed tan pants and a swirling orange, ruffled shirt appeared on the upper decks of the Jackal. "Admiring the superior ship are you?" Samurai Lau shouted down to the pair.

Grim cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled back "where is it? I don't see a ship better than the one I'm standing on anywhere!" Lau threw back his head and laughed, one hand resting on the katana on his waist. "I see that all the guns you have fired have not dulled your wits my friend! I will have to buy you a drink later!"

"Yes, you will!" Grim shouted back, leaving the railing and picking up a coil of thick, hempen rope. He leapt over the railing and wound the robe around a crenel on the dock, keeping the ship in place as Aetien shut down the engines and helped Elsie lay down the gangplank. The crew crossed onto the dock, Grim grabbing hold of Shaw's arm as he walked past.

"I'm sorry but you have first watch" he said, grinning and sounding like he wasn't very sorry at all. Shaw's shoulders slumped at the prospect of spending the next few hours stuck on board the ship while the others enjoyed themselves. "You too Lars" Elsie said, turning her apprentice back towards the ship. Grim cackled at the disappointed on the faces of the junior crew members. "Don't worry, you two will get your turn in a few hours" he said, but that did little to placate the pair. Grim just shrugged and linked arms with Elsie.

From the port, they paid a few coppers to enter the city and from there they entered the marketplace. Grim instantly detached himself from Elsie and gravitated towards a merchant stand that was positively bristling with rifles, revolvers, a few aged flintlocks and even a triple-barrelled elephant gun sitting in a place of honour in the middle of the display. Soon after chatting with the merchant, Grim pointed at an expensive lever-action rifle with oak furnishings. The merchant placed it beneath the display for safekeeping, but not before taking bag stuffed with gold and silver.

"Two seconds and he's already spent half of his money" Aetien sighed as Grim returned. "I'll have you know that I have a foolproof plan" he shot back, pointing at a cheering crowd that was gathered in a wide circle. "Fighting spiders" Elsie shuddered, spiders being her phobia. "Grim, the odds of –"Aetien started but Grim was already gone.

Aetien knew a lost cause when he saw one. He just turned around and started looking for the nearest engine maker's shop. After an hour of searching and another hour of shopping, he had organised replacement air filters, wood for furnishings, an upgraded kerosene system that was gravity-fed and some alloy armour-plating. The cylinders and piston heads would have to be tracked down by the engine maker as the ones he had in store were the wrong size, although this wasn't a major tragedy as the current ones were still in fairly good shape despite mandating replacement.

As head gunner, Grim was in charge of sourcing the Hellhound and finding the ammunition that he needed. Elsie would have to install any other upgrades and the kerosene system by herself or with a hand from either himself or Grim. Lars was finishing his apprenticeship with Elsie and would remain behind at the Skyport branch of the Engineers Guild and would seek employment on another airship after they had left.

The Bastard Fury was a Pyramidion class airship, specifically designed as a vanguard fighter. Pyramidions were smaller and more heavily armoured than most other crafts but it was balanced out by the massive Mavik Industries that dwarfed even Grim's height, giving the ship incredible speed when charging forwards. The catch was that the weight of the armour and guns, combined with the speed of the main engine played havoc with the airship's turning circle. The two new Svord auxiliary engines would have severely decreased their turning radius but their elusive status meant that Elsie also have to lean on some of her contacts inside the Engineers Guild in order to track a pair down.

Aetien made arrangements for the portable items to be transported back to the ship and left the store. The replacement armour-plating would have to be lifted onto the envelope by crane and installed then, as it was far too heavy for them to lift by themselves. The Hellhound might have to be fitted by a similar method if it was too large, but that was up to Grim to decide.

The sun was setting and Aetien's head was spinning with numbers and weight ratios by the time he left the store and returned to The Bastard Fury. Elsie was already there and flexing her hand as she sat in a portable chair on the deck. "Why are there so many forms to sign for a few hundred fucking dollars of mentor pay?" she groaned as he climbed the gangplank. Aetien just sat on the deck and rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand. "Paying mentors too much money is a recipe for bankr-"Aetien started but Elsie sighed and said "sarcasm".

The awkward silence began to set in but fortunately they were rescued by the sudden arrival of Grim, rifle in hand, who was positively fuming. "Did the fighting spiders not work out?" Aetien chuckled. "The spiders went fucking perfectly but I decided to leave when to locals got a bit antsy. They spun some shit about me rigging the matches" Grim snarled, his lip curling. "Ended up playing dice with a Nalmian spice trader. My dice are loaded so I switched them on him when he wasn't looking and the fucker somehow swapped his own set back in. I'm still not sure how he did it".

"That's what you get for cheating" Elsie giggled as she got up and stretched. Grim gave her the finger and headed for the cabin entrance. "Don't start that karma shit with me woman, it's gonna be a big day tomorrow" he said, cracking his neck as he opened the door.


End file.
